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Board wants voice in local road plans

Concerned DOT will overrule

Athens-area officials want more say-so on how they are allowed to spend a shrinking pot of state and federal money for roads and other transportation projects.

MACORTS, a board of Athens-Clarke, Oconee and Madison county residents and officials that advises the state Department of Transportation, is too small to control how it spends transportation funding. Metro areas with more than 200,000 people, on the other hand, do control such funding.

Athens-Clarke Mayor Heidi Davison said Wednesday she is frustrated with the process. She said she wants an explanation of the rules and a way to exert more influence.

"We have more power than we've been told," Davison said. "We're just not exercising it."

MACORTS is starting work on a long-range plan that will identify projects members want to fund through 2035 and expects to have $500 million to spend during the next 25 years, less than half of past 25-year estimates.

The board will sort out which projects members want to include in the latest 25-year plan this summer, but members said they are worried the DOT will ignore the plan and build whatever state officials want built.

For example, local officials said the DOT gave them no reason for why it fast-tracked a $7 million widening of U.S. Highway 129. The project was unpopular among Jefferson Road residents and not a priority for local governments, Athens-Clarke Planning Director Brad Griffin said.

"Roads don't just get widened," Davison said. "Somebody influential made a phone call."

MACORTS is scheduled to finish updating its long-range plan in July and hold public hearings in July and August.